Brad Mehldau’s ‘Highway Rider’ takes a fascinating route

Brad Mehldau

“Highway Rider”

(Nonesuch)

* * * *

Let it never be said that Brad Mehldau lacks ambition. The gifted pianist and composer’s latest is a reunion with über-producer Jon Brion and percussion gadfly Matt Chamberlain, who joined Mehldau’s trio on 2002’s eclectic “Largo.” But instead of re-creating that record’s arresting, electronics-flecked sound, Mehldau has upped the ante by teaming with saxophonist Joshua Redman and a full orchestra for a sprawling, two-disc travelogue of sorts that might be his most fully realized work yet.

Though primarily a jazz artist, Mehldau is no stranger to classical, recently collaborating with Orchestre National d’Île de France and mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter. And while there’s plenty of gorgeous orchestral sweep involved, such as the dramatic “Always Departing,” what’s striking is how much the album feels like two disciplines on equal footing. For the most part -- most notably on the 12-minute mini-epic “We’ll Cross the River Together” -- Mehldau and Redman engage a battery of horns, strings and percussion in a lively conversation, a byproduct of the record’s emphasis on live recording.

Though Mehldau lists Strauss and Beethoven as among this record’s touchstones, its closely cropped moments leave some of the greatest impressions. Against Mehldau’s acrobatic piano, a pattering hand-clap rhythm lends a raw intimacy to “Capriccio,” and after a scene-stealing soprano saxophone solo from Redman, an unexpectedly playful chorus of la-la-las lights up “The Falcon Will Fly Again.”

A simmering, searching duet between Redman and Mehldau on “Old West” is another highlight, as is Mehldau’s teaming with usual trio mates Larry Grenadier and Jeff Ballard, who revisit some of the twitchy, drum-and-bass drive of “Largo” with “Into the City.” Full of unexpected twists and lush, evocative detours, “Highway Rider” is most definitely a trip, and one well worth taking.

-- Chris Barton What lasts is her craftsmanship

Julieta Venegas

“Otra Cosa”

(Sony International)

* * *

Love’s capricious, sometimes cruel behavior, and the ambiguous feelings amor engenders, are the alpha and omega of the Julieta Venegas songbook. Since she began recording in the late 1990s, the Long Beach-born, Tijuana-bred musician has parsed her conflicting feelings about emotional commitment with surgical precision.

In the liner-notes photos for her 2003 record “Sí,” she posed as an ambivalent bride teething her white glove and ripping off her wedding gown. On her Grammy Award-winning “Limón y Sal” (Lemon and Salt), from 2006, she pondered the taste of romance, alternately bitter and tartly seductive.

But, closing fast on 40, Venegas appears to have reached a kind of truce with Eros, philosophically if not psychologically. She immediately sets the tone on her latest disc, “Otra Cosa,” with the opening track “Amores Platónicos” (Platonic Loves), a deceptively perky pop confection with a languid, reggae-fied beat. Addressing a beautiful garden as if it were a feckless lover, Venegas intones in Spanish that “it’s better the fantasy that you give me” than the more fraught reality.

That Socratic-lite statement of purpose reverberates through a disc that finds Venegas revisiting familiar thematic ground, with no great revelations to offer, but with her considerable charm, sincerity and melodic subtlety intact. She quirkily caroms from flirty hopefulness to unrequited longing and remorse, her catchy compositions buoyed by her sweetly brooding voice and jaunty accordion, guitar and keyboard playing.

Her reverence for boleros and other Mexican regional music forms sparkles through songs such as the disc’s title number and “Duda,” a reminder that, for Venegas, romance may falter, but passionate craftsmanship will prevail.

-- Reed Johnson A sampler of pop tunefulness

Fyfe Dangerfield

“Fly Yellow Moon”

(self-release)

* * *

With his band, the Guillemots, Fyfe Dangerfield zeroed in on that moment of the musical day between the darkness of Morrissey’s melancholy night and the dawn of Brian Wilson’s sunny early confectionary pop.

On this delightfully scrappy, self-released solo debut, the emotional weight shifts a bit more toward the light, while retaining the shoestring sophistication that makes the Guillemots so appealing.

The leadoff track, “When You Walk in the Room,” is a pure-pop delight, 21st century style, with scratchy synth sounds setting the tone and infectious beat for his declaration of what it feels to be so deliriously in love that he can admit, “I can’t help it if I’m happy not to be sad.”

“So Brand New” acknowledges the struggles of the past that make joy in the present possible, invoking Shakespeare the way any decent British songwriter -- or at least any twentysomething Brit -- apparently must: “Once I was livid/ Once I was in hate/ Once I was Lear on the rocks.”

He and producer Adam Noble have delivered a set of stylistically disparate tracks that’s almost a sampler, from the wall-of-noise pop of “Faster Than the Setting Sun” to the acoustic folk of “Livewire,” from the Philly-soul-soaked “She Needs Me” to the shoegaze philosophizing of “Don’t Be Shy.” It might splinter into anarchy if not for the connectivity of Dangerfield’s unrelenting tunefulness and endearing vulnerability of his vocals.

When he sings “This could go in any direction, any direction at all,” on the closing cut, he makes the wide-open musical space surrounding him tangibly real.

-- Randy Lewis Unwise lives and rock grooves

Drive-By Truckers

“The Big To-Do”

(ATO)

* * *

“The Big To-Do” is the Drive-By Truckers’ first album for Dave Matthews’ ATO Records, and it also marks the studio debut of keyboardist Jay Gonzalez, who takes over the role played on the band’s last set by veteran R&B session guy Spooner Oldham.

Musically, though, these 13 new tracks hardly represent a fresh start for the Truckers: Like the dozen or so releases that preceded it, “The Big To-Do” examines the rough-and-tumble lives of the unfortunate and the unwise over rowdy Southern-rock grooves teeming with fuzzy, Crazy Horse-style guitars.

“A family can’t live on these fast-food wages,” sings frontman Patterson Hood in one recession-minded track with an unprintable title, and that’s as handy a demonstration as any here that a rabidly devoted fan base and reams of critical praise have done little to quell the group’s underdog zeal.

As on past DBT albums, Hood occasionally cedes lead-vocal duties to one of his bandmates, which helps stave off the bar-band blahs that can threaten this kind of material. Guitarist Mike Cooley, in particular, provides some crucial tragicomic relief in “Birthday Boy,” where he sketches out a scene of sex-worker ennui with brutal efficiency: “ ‘Which one’s the birthday boy?’ she said / ‘I ain’t got all night.’ ”

-- Mikael Wood